Nima Akbari: arch-viz artist & architect interview

I am Nima Akbari. I live in Tehran/Iran. I am an architect, 3D Artist, and an interior designer. I’m also interested in photography and I almost always do that in my free time. Since 2011 I have been doing them all. Over recent years I have been working as a freelancer. Thanks to great sources and recent studies related to my job, I always try to keep myself up to date because it is the only thing that matters to me, and I love the CG world because it gives me the chance to create my own world somehow.

The last project of mine that was my own villa located in a province. It was meant to be totally different from what I had done before in order to make the viewer feel good. First of all, I checked the location and start drawing the plan in Autocad and modeling it in 3ds Max. In this project I tried to use warm and non-warm colors together to create an outstanding atmosphere and convey friendliness and warmth as a result.

In my opinion doing new things is more like challenging myself to get more experience and consequently gain more capabilities and abilities. I usually try to use different software no matter if I am good at them or not. I use them anyway in my projects to practice and work on my weaknesses. Whenever I find myself some free time I prefer to spend it on learning new software, however we should not neglect the fact that learning every single software might mislead you from your target and distract your mind if you don’t make the right decisions.

I have been using many software such as Autocad, 3ds Max, Marvelous Designer for  fabric simulation, ZBrush for sculpting, and V-Ray for rendering. These days I plan to learn Corona Render professionally, to use it for my future projects because I am in love with the outcome.

The world is changing and improving so quickly. We are as a small part of it, and as such are always playing catch up; it necessitates hard work and solid information. From my point of view, the best teacher is nature, because by looking at it you can easily discover how perfectly everything like colors are placed beside each other, and by considering the details we can use them delicately.

There are some social groups such as Facebook, Behance, Pinterest, and Instagram that I use to display my projects, and I use viewer criticism to make my projects better and better. My most common hashtags to check on other work is #vray, #chaosgroup, and #autodesk.

In my opinion, you can never discover the value of your work unless you compare it to others, and I believe that peers are the key, and recognition of those peers is the most important thing in our job. It allows you to compare yourself with them, and also gives you motivation to work better and harder.

I am a perfectionist and always try to do my best, so I believe that there is a chance of getting better and better. I think for an artist there is nothing more than to be known as a great artist in the world, and I always try to work as hard as I can to reach to this target.

There are many artists and I always enjoy their works and I am inspired by them because of their combination and motivation. The most inspiring artists for me are Bertrand Benoit, Peter Guthrie, and Marek Denko.

I always have a new plan for my next project, and I make an effort to come up with new ideas because I think that is the way we can complete any work as well as possible. But the point that is clear is that my next project is going to be the most challenging project that I have ever done.